Trivial And Nonsensical Rules In Congress

4The Senate Can't Vote If People Just Don't Show Up

One of the primary arguments against term limits in Congress is how complicated modern politics has become. In theory, by the time they would learn "how it all works," a lawmaker's term would expire and some other goober would come in and attempt to learn the ropes. This would be tragic as newbies might not be able to effectively utilize exotic maneuvers like one often used in State-level politics called "Quorum Busting."

We'll see if we can try to explain it to our non-professional-politician readers: If somebody in Congress doesn't want a bill to go to vote because they're worried it won't go their way, they can... just not show up. Like literally they can just run away. If there aren't a certain amount of voters physically in the room, nobody can vote. That's it. That's the whole move.

The sergeant-at-arms is allowed to compel senators to come in and vote (and they've physically carried assholes onto the floor before), but they can't do anything if they cross state lines. Now, we're going to go out on a limb and guess that most members of Congress aren't exactly peak physical specimens, but if enough senators manage to charter a bus or jack a Honda, all of Congress grinds to a halt.

3They Go Way Out Of Their Way For Acronyms

It's one thing to come up with a law that will enact meaningful change, but it's another thing entirely to convince your fellow lawmakers to actually pass the thing. You can argue a law's merits by showing statistics, commissioning research studies, or polling constituents, but there's no guarantee. So, instead, most politicians apparently spend the time they would have wasted on research carefully crafting rad acronyms for their proposed laws.

We're talking next-level shit like kicking down the doors of Congress and demanding they pass your motherfucking "Robo COP Act." Sure, the actual law has nothing to do with creating an android police force and, in fact, actually stands for "Robo Calls Off Phones" but nobody will focus on semantics when you fire your shotguns akimbo into the ceiling and demand a vote on your Robo COP bill.

2They Get Free Paper Based On The Population Of Their State

While Congressional bean soup perks are doled out equally, there are some benefits that scale depending on the number of constituents they represent. For example, senators are allowed each year a certain amount of free, tax-payer funded "blank paper, letterhead paper and envelopes" for their office to use, but lest we think this paper is handed out on an unlimited basis, it turns out their paper quota is based on a very specific formula.

According to the law, they get "one and one-third sheets of blank paper per adult constituent." Why you'd need an extra one-third sheet of paper is a mystery only known to the Founding Fathers and is presumably the focus of National Treasure 3. USA Today helpfully notes that as of 2014, this would mean that "The Illinois senators each receive 11,605,333 sheets of blank paper; the West Virginia senators receive only 1,874,667."

1On Wednesdays You Can Talk About Whatever The Hell You Want

As this current iteration shows, many Congressional rules appear exclusively designed to slow the process down and make everything take forever. From one perspective, maybe it's a good thing we can't just constantly pass laws whenever the fancy strikes, but from another, do we really need to dedicate an entire day to Representatives who just want to talk about whatever bullshit law they're interested in that week?

See, usually it takes a lot of work for a bill to be officially discussed. It has to pass through several hoops and get past the Committee on Rules. Unless, of course, it's Wednesday. On "Calendar Wednesday," anybody can bring up for consideration literally any bill that has been discussed at some point in the history of Congress.

You can see how randomly suggesting we talk about how you think it'd be really cool if we brought back Prohibition would be sort of a waste of time and distract from more pressing legal considerations. As such, the House of Representatives usually votes to bypass this pointless exercise, but there are always exceptions and occasionally a group of whoever happens to be the Minority Party will vote to let it go through so they can waste time and slow down discussion on bills they don't want to talk about. It's just another way to fillibuster -- that is, talking about stupid shit for so long nobody can vote on the important bills.

Jordan Breeding also writes for a whole mess of other people, the twitter, and is hoping to soon pass the KICKASS Act (Kindly Include Crustaceans, Kansans As Subhuman Species Act).